Fly me to the moon?

Russian space officials are working out a plan to send high-rolling space passengers around the moon and back for a cool $100 million.

And just as the Soviet space shuttle looked like the American version, this idea has much in common with an American company’s proposal to use the international space station and a beefed-up Soyuz craft to offer an Apollo 8-style translunar excursion.

NBC News space analyst James Oberg wrote about the Lunar Express concept eight months ago: As laid out by Constellation Services International’s Charles Miller, the passenger would first be brought up to the international space station aboard a modified Russian Soyuz craft. Then the Soyuz would make a rendezvous with a booster-equipped logistics module that has been sent into orbit separately. The beefed-up craft would make an elongated figure-8 course around the moon – not landing there, but slingshotting around to return to Earth.